


Blackbird Sketchbook

by evil_whimsey



Series: Blackbird [6]
Category: Ouran High School Host Club - All Media Types
Genre: Backstory, Gen, M/M, Other, Sketches, filling in the blanks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-16
Updated: 2015-12-27
Packaged: 2018-01-04 19:25:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 3,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1084817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evil_whimsey/pseuds/evil_whimsey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Outtakes and sketches from the Blackbirdverse, involving various characters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Melon Candy Devotional

**Author's Note:**

> Some of these pieces were scenes that didn't really fit the pace and structure of the main Blackbird chapters, but they offer a peek into the characters' lives and development which in retrospect, I thought should be included with the overall series. Mostly they came out of various writing exercises, hence the brevity and sketchiness.

(** _Set during the timeframe of These Broken Wings**_

 

Melon Candy Devotional

Morinozuka Takashi  
386 words

 

The cellophane crinkles in his fingers, sticky from the heat of his hand. He folds it in half, and half again, deftly tucking the folds as the sugar scent rises from his hands. He breathes in deep, and all the world's sharp edges go a little blurred.

It's impossible to say which he misses most. The warm weight that once perched on his shoulders, like a bundle of sleepy sunlight. That lilting treble voice making a child's rhyme of his name. Or this, the soothing smell of sweets; the vividest reminder of his lifelong companion.

The afternoons are always hardest, but this ritual has carried him through so far. A tray of cakes every day at four o'clock would draw questions, and he has had quite enough of those.

_How are you holding up?_ some have asked, and though they mean well, he can only stare in response. There's no one around now to distinguish his stoicism from baffled speechlessness, so they call it the former. It's just as well, for how can he possibly admit he wakes up every day feeling lonesome and empty as a park bench in January? 

He's a guardian, a tenth generation protector. Not a poet, nor a painter. Mornings he stands on the threshold of the family doujo, feeling snow drifts and dead leaves rustling across his heart with ghosts' fingers. It's baking midsummer to everyone in the world but him. How is he to explain that?

Some days he eats the melon candy, bright fresh green dissolving on his tongue, and remembers days lit with laughter, pink icing breath huffing against his cheek, when the center of the world was a small sturdy hand clasped in his. Other days, those same memories come at him with harpoon edges and the treat is crushed to dust in his grip, clinging and lingering in his clothes. Then everything he touches will be sugar-gilt and strangely fragrant all evening.

The candy wrapper goes into an envelope with two dozen others, painstakingly folded cellophane cranes. It's part of his ritual; giving a hopeful shape to the empty husks of his days. 

He licks a sticky crystal off his thumb, and squeezes his eyes shut against a pang of pure longing.

_Come home, Mitsukuni,_ is his simple, silent prayer. 

_Please come home soon._


	2. Escaping Captivity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sketch from a haiku-prompt challenge, featuring Arai. Takes place during These Broken Wings

  
**Escaping Captivity**

Ouran High School Host Club  
Arai  
[Prompt: Confronting An Enemy]

Determined to stay overnight  
I came alone;  
the Moon on the thirteenth night

(--Busou)

 

The first night staying in his uncle's spare room, he gives himself two weeks to pull his act together. Two weeks to shape up, after a year of crutches, ice packs, and watching his hopes disintegrate, waiting for things to improve. 

Every day, he lifts crates until his shoulders ache, hauls bulky rice sacks in trembling arms, and stacks pallets, wincing at the throb in his back. For every twinge, every tender muscle, he is grateful, and pushes harder. It isn't perfect, but it's a choice he has made. A choice to be good for something.

On the eighth night, he doesn't collapse into bed right after dinner. He downs the last of his pain prescription to shut his knee up, and takes over cleaning the kitchen.

On the tenth night, after washing dishes, he heads gingerly downstairs with the trash, and checks the front and back door locks. The climb back up is much trickier.

On the twelfth night, he limps to the bus stop on the corner. Thumps down on the bench, watches the traffic lights blink over the empty intersection. Rubs at his knee, and thinks that surely, this isn't the best he can do.

He remembers other spring nights, skimming across the turf, under glaring field lights. Nimble, surefooted, heart racing in time with his legs, and that breathtaking moment where the ball soared high and true off his kick....

That isn't his life anymore. But surely, surely he can do better than this.

It's five blocks to the park, and he almost doesn't make it. He collapses on the gazebo steps, eyes stinging from pain. Yanks the straps off his brace, and feels his knee grinding like a sack of hot marbles when he bends it.

The park is empty; all bone white and black shadows under the moon. He looks to the foothills, but sees only silver light smearing wet in his eyelashes.

His two weeks are up tomorrow. He doesn't know how he'll walk back to his uncle's tonight. But this is his choice: to keep moving forward.

It's all he has, now.


	3. Spartan Training

In summer, you stood on a balance beam, suspended above the doujo floor, for two hours every afternoon. The air reeked of fatigue and perspiration; sultry in June, and sweltering in August. Sensei's commands rang out sharp in the lifeless air, and you stood straight, tall, though the soles of your feet were slick with sweat, and your thighs trembled, and your clothing stuck to your skin, in damp itchy patches.

In winter, you stood on a stump or a rock out in the courtyard pond, stood still and straight while the wind numbed your cheeks and fingers, made your eyes burn and your nose run. After four falls--either into the icy shock of pond water, or down on the hard grass matting in the doujo, Sensei would call an end to the exercise. But that wasn't much relief. The point of training was to instill discipline, and one way or another, discipline would be learned.

Failing the standing test meant shame and menial labor the rest of the day. Sweeping the doujo in your frozen wet exercise clothes, enduring the embarrassed sidelong looks of the others. Raking the gravel drive in the blazing sun, pulling weeds from the pond, while the gardeners took a break in the shade.

By age seven, Takashi was an expert with the rake and the broom and from his cousin Mitsukuni, he'd learned the fine art of timing as well. Learned to time his falls just right from rocks, stumps, balance beams, so that his cousin (who hadn't quite come to terms with his center of gravity yet) wouldn't have to perform Sensei's menial assignments alone.

The truth was that young Takashi was capable of standing for hours in any weather, heedless of the sweat trickling down his ribcage, or the frozen rain pelting the nape of his neck. Like a hardy sapling, he seemed capable of taking root wherever he was put, whether the surface was level or not. If Sensei ever noticed that Takashi was taking his falls deliberately with Mitsukuni, he never said.

After all, the Morinozukas had served the Haninozuka family for generations. And a protector's lessons were just as important as a warrior's.


	4. Branch

It was seldom, that they could take time off together. Rare, that Arai could stay at the estate overnight, and they both could sleep in and relax. They made the time because it was necessary, they were important to each other, but Arai was needed in town, and the summer estate required almost daily attention, and neither could countenance shirking their responsibilities. 

So even when others urged them both, it was uncomfortable at first, taking days just for themselves. And then one evening Mori respectfully pointed out that Arai's uncle had run the grocery for more than a decade by himself. And Arai quietly mentioned that Mori's estate was his own; he could do, or not do, as he pleased with it. Which was true, and so Mori decided he would stop fretting over one or two days a week; it was foolish, considering how he looked forward to them. 

So he told Arai _Yes,_ and then _You. What do you want tomorrow? It's your day._

Arai's smile had lit the room to its furthest corners, and he'd stretched out his arms, the width of Mori's shoulders, and answered, _You. It's your day too._

 

**

 

On the long winter nights, when the tree branches rattled in the wind and the sky glittered like black ice, they burrowed a cave under the quilts, and drowsed in bed with their legs tangled together until after the sun rose. They were early risers by habit, but on Their Day they could stay put as long as they wished. Sometimes napping, sometimes murmuring back and forth. Sometimes a brush of fingers and a lazy morning stretch turned into a kiss, a warm palm down the curve of Mori's back, urging him closer, and _what do you want today_ became _what do you want right now?_ Mori would answer with his mouth on Arai's collarbone, his shoulder, tasting his fingertips and his mouth ( _You. You. You._ ), until they had to kick the quilts back for air, bodies gleaming and flushed in the clean morning light.

 

**

 

It was their last night together before spring planting would start, when Mori crept carefully, silently from the bed. Dawn was still an hour off, and Arai lay curled on his side, deep in sleep, lashes dark against his cheeks. Mori almost couldn't leave him, knowing this might be the last time for two or more weeks that he could just roll over, press a kiss between smooth shoulder blades, and drift with the peaceful rise and fall of Arai's ribs under his arm.

But what he had planned would be worth an hour missed, and really there was no better time. If all went well, he could be done before Arai stirred with the sunrise, back in time to see his eyes open, which had become Mori's favorite moment of any day.

He'd already prepared the spot in the courtyard, near the lone maple tree, and on his instruction, Hito and the groundskeeper had readied everything else, earlier in the night. Two oil lamps were just enough light to work by, without lighting the windows of the residence wing, and so long as Mori was careful with the shovel, he wouldn't make noise.

The work drove the deep chill from his limbs, but he hardly broke a sweat, even when the first grey glow before sunrise showed his breath, puffing out in the still sharp air. He took a moment then to rest and survey the work.

Yes. This would be good. This would be worth the hour out of their time together, rare and priceless as it was. He put out the lamps because he didn't need them anymore; it was almost morning.

**

( _good morning_ ) Combing Arai's hair back with his fingers, to kiss his forehead. ( _good morning_ ) Touching the corner of his mouth, where it quirked when he grinned. 

Sometimes Arai blinked his eyes fully open and smiled when he woke, and Mori's heart stilled for a beat and then thumped hard to catch up. Sometimes his lashes fluttered, and his eyes were soft and slow to focus, and Mori didn't need air or water or food, he could live on that quiet sleepy sigh and nothing else.

This morning he lifted his rumpled head and blinked curiously. "You're dressed."

"Yes," said Mori. "Come and see." Because this was their day, and the beginning of it was the best time. Arai could see his gift before anyone else; it would be a sight just for him.

 

He watched Mori curiously on the way to the courtyard, but then when Mori pointed forward, he halted. Stared.  
"You....you just did this?"

"It's yours," Mori answered. He'd chosen the biggest tree he could plant by himself. And though it was only half the size of the original maple, given a few years, it could catch up.

"Mine..." Arai looked down at the newly turned earth, glanced at Mori for permission, before putting a tentative hand on the trunk. He touched the limbs, the bare branches, looking solemn. 

"You gave me a tree, on your land." Unexpected brightness welled in his eyes, and Mori reached for his hand, drew in close against his side.

"You have roots here, now. There will always be a place here, for you."

Arai's arms came tight around him, and with the sun just peeking over the hills and everything hushed and still, Mori felt for a moment like they were the center, the axis of their own world.

"Someday," said Arai, looking up at him, and Mori promised him, "Yes."

"You," Arai promised back. Mori leaned in, cupping his cheek, and kissed him.  
"Us."

*****

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chronology of this particular chapter is a bit wonky, in the overall scheme of the Blackbirdverse. There are two (currently) unposted stories that happen prior to this, and so far as I'm able to figure out, this takes place around two years after "Learn To Fly".
> 
> If. Um. Anybody was wondering.


	5. Reed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Takes place during [These Broken Wings](http://archiveofourown.org/works/211424/chapters/316473)

Bend, says Takashi, palms spread flat on Arai's shoulderblades, guiding him down, and Arai grits his teeth at the distance to his knees, fixed by the burn of his hamstrings.

There was a time when he could sit on the grass, grab his toes and fold himself in half, like a clothespin; back when he could run and kick, and stand up from a chair without checking for something solid to grab onto, just in case.

Sometimes he hates his body, for being so tight and stubborn, hates that he has to learn this all again when he'd had it fine before. He hates that he took running for granted, back when fifty meters was nothing and now, some days, every little step costs him.

Nowadays he hates stretching too and the only reason he puts up with it, is that he hates being a disappointment even more.

 

Bend, says Takashi, with the weight of his eyes, the weight of his implacable patience bearing down on Arai's back. He stretches until his calves tremble, until the tendons are rigid hot wires, burning white beneath his skin. He stares down at the weave of his sweatpants, no closer than yesterday, last week; stares until his eyes tear up and his thighs are wailing, begging for him to quit.

It's not that he wants to quit. It's just that no matter what he does, there's pain. And he's tired. So damn tired of it hurting.  
"I'm sorry," he tells Takashi. "I'll try harder." Not that he knows how, it's just the thing you say when somebody puts up with you. 

When Takashi pulls his hands back, when he sighs, Arai's shoulders feel cold. His calves flutter madly, and the bitterness in his throat is brimming over. He closes his eyes, and swallows it down.

 

Bend, so you don't break, Takashi tells him. 

They're standing by a shallow, marshy pond at the far end of the property, where Takashi catches the top of a high cattail and draws it down, down in a long arc toward the ground. Arai spots another cattail, creased in half with its head drowning in the mud, and thinks he gets the point. But still.

"I used to be good at it," he says. "I don't get why it's so hard now."  
"It takes time. When you worry, it takes longer."

"I'm working at it. I stretch twice a day, like you told me."  
Takashi nods, and tugs the cattail a little lower. "When you learn how to bend, it will be easier."  
Arai shrugs. "That's what I said, I'm--."

"You know how to stretch." Takashi stands and lets the cattail spring back upright, leaves rustling. "Now you're learning how to bend."

Sometimes, Takashi's riddles make him a little crazy. "Okay," he sighs. "Just. How do I do that? I don't get it."  
"How does a plant bend when the wind blows?" 

A Zen riddle. Even better. "I dunno. It just does."

"It doesn't try to hold itself still," Takashi solemnly tells him. 

"Oh."  
"Think about that, when you stretch."  
"Yeah," Arai nods, thoroughly confused. "I will."

 

He takes a long time soaking in the tub that night, trying to sort out the difference between bending and stretching. 

The thing is, the thing that secretly really scares him, is what if he can't bend? What if he always has to be extra careful of that step-stool in the grocery storeroom? What if he always has a limp on cold days, and has to wear that stupid brace whenever there's ice? What if he can really never run again?

What if I'm already broken? he wonders. If he holds himself still, it's because he's learned how much a sudden fall can hurt, how it hurts inside and out, and the fear of it seizes him up sometimes. Plants bend because they don't know any better, and back when he was running his heart out on a soccer field, neither did he. He never thought for one second, how much he'd miss it if he couldn't.

He never thought at all. He just did it.

He's hanging up his towel, when the thought springs back and smacks him between the eyes, like Takashi's cattail, and suddenly the whole conversation snaps into perfect focus. What was it like, before he'd gotten hurt? When he stretched out of thoughtless habit, and running and kicking were just reflexes? What was it like, back when he just did, and didn't know any better?

That's what he needs to remember.

He settles on his futon and straightens his legs out, just like he's done every morning and night for a month. Closes his eyes this time, so he won't be tempted to measure the distance, or even think about progress. He takes a deep breath, and tilts forward, breathing out as he goes, until all the usual muscles light up and start to sing.

_Don't worry about it,_ he tells himself, and bows his head. _Just bend._


	6. Drowse

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set during the timeframe of [These Broken Wings](http://archiveofourown.org/works/211424/chapters/316473)

Drowse

 

He goes out at the same time every night, to see if Mitsukuni will come back. 

After the first ten nights he stops counting, because it isn't as though he has any choice about it. This isn't a challenge, or a test of fortitude, or even a mission for him. Most of the day he has no clear idea where he is, or what's happening around him. And then the sun sets, and it's time to go outside and wait, so he does.

Something tells him the world has kept on turning around him, but where he is, everything has stopped. He'll find himself in the bathroom, holding his toothbrush, or sitting next to his brother at dinner, or halfway down the garden path to the doujo, and every time he has to stop and think how he got there. What was he doing, between one moment and the next? How long was he nowhere, before surfacing to find himself somewhere? It makes him curious occasionally, but the effort it takes to think about it makes him tired, and usually he decides to go lie down instead of think.

And then the sun goes down, and it's time to go and wait.

He stands in the same place every night. At the bottom of the steps, by the driveway, next to where Mitsukuni's car had idled. Where the rear door had closed, before the car pulled away. Of course the driveway is raked every morning at sunrise. There are no tire marks, or shoe prints still marking the spot. But he doesn't need them. He knows the place because he feels it, the precise quality of the emptiness at this particular patch of grass and gravel is what brings him here.


	7. Latent

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also set during [These Broken Wings](http://archiveofourown.org/works/211424/chapters/316473)

Latent

There are things Arai doesn't like to talk about, certain questions he'd rather not answer, and one of the reasons he really likes being in Karuizawa is that practically nobody knows him. They don't know his family, except for his uncle, and they don't know his past, except for all the summers he's spent in the village growing up.

It was like he'd been granted an alternate life, when he moved here, like those movies where someone goes into Witness Protection, and they're given a new name, a new identity, their whole life suddenly has a different story behind it. 

With hardly any fuss, Arai finds himself slipping into the life of the grocer's nephew, into the quiet routine of his uncle's apartment over the store, and into the reassuring sameness of the work. Stocking, deliveries, cleanup, greeting the customers by name. The only reminder that he ever had another life is his tricky, unpredictable knee. The bad fall in a soccer match that gradually wore his old life to a barren, hopeless standstill.

But he doesn't like to think about that. He's getting around better nowadays, and he's proven himself strong enough to handle the work his uncle needs done, and even though he catches his uncle sometimes giving him looks--like something's on his mind but it's not his place to mention it--Arai knows he has a steady foothold here. And even if his life is a borrowed story, nobody's going to yank it out from under him anytime soon.

As summer shuffles off into fall, Arai waits to get homesick, but it never happens. He doesn't miss his old bedroom, or his narrow raised bed where he spent so many bored miserable hours, occasionally curled up exhausted with pain from his knee but still unable to sleep. He doesn't miss his old neighborhood, or his friends. All his friends were in soccer anyway, and eventually they all drifted off after he quit the team.

There are lots of other things he doesn't miss, but since he doesn't miss them, there's no point considering them. Uncle never asks exactly what happened to make Arai leave home for good, but Arai has a feeling he knows anyway.

Arai doesn't like to talk about his dad. Though in time, it occurs to him that he comes by that honestly, because no one else in the family does either.

**


	8. (Timelapse)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Basically a lovenote to the Blackbird world. Written for a music prompt. [Marco Mahler: "Hike The Lake"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wx1iIwMcmLo)

(Timelapse)

It's the season of goldenrod. Yellow stubbled fields and trees in bonfire colors blurring past the truck windows. The country roads unwind in dust and swirling leaves, spinning out in the wake of passing traffic. It's the crisp bite into pears from the last harvest, fruit preserves stewing in the kitchen; stacking away the summer produce boxes and shaking out the winter quilts. The tourists depart in long columns into early shadows.

It's the season of frost; knuckle-bruising cold at dawn, sweeping the steps, shoveling snow from driveway and sidewalk, and soot-colored slush crusting at the curbs. The trees bare and black in the driving sleet. It's the warmth of kotatsu, baking the aches from legs and knees, flannel lining, jacket collars turned up. Hot nabe in white bowls, and long deep breaths in the pool house, careful stretching near the heater; bend deep, smell the dry grassy musk from the tatami.

It's the season of green, rain beading on the windows, on the blossoms, snowdrifts of pink in the plum orchard, kissing in the dappled light, hidden, while the water trickles down the canal, soaking the earth in rows. New shoots and spring scrubbing, sleeves rolled back, sneezing over dusty shelves, squeak of wet sneakers on the floorboard mats. The tillers tilting and grinding the fields to rich black, as the sun breaks long shafts through the sweet-scented rain.

It's the season of sun. Racing up the hillside: first one to the tea house pump wins. Cold, cold water from deep down steaming on the skin. Ices and ceiling fans, sticky skin gleaming under the lifted hem of a white shirt. It's lemonade on the porch, cool mornings and sultry afternoons. Children's shouts echoing from the shade in the park, where an old bronze statue stands guard over the heart of a village. It's a bicycle and a ball cap, melons and garden hoses, and a white picket fence standing straight and true, throwing pointed shadows down a verdant velvet evening lawn; the memory of one perfect day.

It's the season of goldenrod...

 

*****


End file.
